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EXERCISES AT THE 
THREE HUNDREDTH 
ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
LANDING of the PILGRIMS 



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EXERCISER 



ON THL 



Three Hundredth Anniversary 



OF THE 



Landing of thl Pilgrims 



HELD AT 



PLYMOUTH, MASSACHUSETTS 

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1920 

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AUG 21 1921 



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PILGRIM TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF 
MASSACHUSETTS 



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( LOUIS K. LIGGETT, Chairman 

ARTHUR LORD MILTON REED 

GEORGE H. LYMAN CHARLES B. BARNES 



WM. CARROLL HILL, Secretary 



ORDER OF EXERCISES 



ORDER OF EXERCISES 



Overture, Plymouth Orchestra 

Prayer, Rev. Arthur B. Whitney 

Ode, Plymouth Men's Chorus 

(Written for the celebration in 1824 by Rev. John Pierpont) 

The pilgrim fathers — where are they? 

The waves that brought them o'er 
Still roll in the bay, and throw their spray. 

As they break along the shore : 
Still roll in the bay, as they rolled that day 

When the Mayflower moored below, 
When the sea around was black with storms. 

And white the shore with snow. 

The mists, that wrapped the pilgrim's sleep. 

Still brood upon the tide; 
And his rocks yet keep their watch by the deep 

To stay its waves of pride; 
But the snow-white sail, that he gave to the gale 

When the heavens looked dark, is gone. 
As an angel's wing, through an opening cloud, 

Is seen, and then withdrawn. 

The pilgrim exile — sainted name! 

The hill, whose icy brow 
Rejoiced, when he came, in the morning's flame. 

In the morning's flame burns now. 
And the moon's cold Hght as it lay that night 

On the hillside and the sea 
Still hes where he laid his houseless head; — 

But the pilgrim — where is he? 

The pilgrim fathers are at rest: 

When Summer's throned on high. 
And the world's warm breast is in verdure dressed 

Go, stand on the hill where they lie. 
The earhest ray of the golden day 

On that hallowed spot is cast; 
And the evening sun, as he leaves the world. 

Looks kindly on that spot last. 



8 

The pilgrim spirit has not fled : 

It walks in noon's broad light; 
And it watches the bed of the glorious dead. 

With the holy stars, by night. 
It watches the bed of the brave who have bled. 

And shall guard this icebound shore, 
Till the waves of the bay, where the Mayflower lay. 

Shall foam and freeze no more. 

Address, . . His Excellency Governor Calvin Coolidge 

Poem LeBaron Russell Briggs, LL.D. 

Hymn Plymouth Men's Chorus 

The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers 

The breaking waves dashed high 

On a stern and rockbound coast 
And the woods, against a stormy sky. 

Their giant branches tossed; 

And the heavy night hung dark. 

The hills and waters o'er. 
When a band of exiles moored their bark 

On the wild New England shore. 

Not as the conqueror comes, 

They, the true-hearted came, 
Not with the roll of the stirring drums. 

And the trumpet that sings of fame; 

Not as the flying come, 

In silence and in fear, — 
They shook the depths of the desert's gloom 

With their hymns of lofty cheer. 

Amidst the storm they sang. 

And the stars heard and the sea! 
And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang 

To the anthem of the free! 

The ocean-eagle soared. 

From his nest by the white wave's foam, 
And the rocking pines of the forest roared — 

This was their welcome home! 



There were men with hoary hair. 

Amidst that pilgrim band. 
Why had they come to wither there 

Away from their childhood's land? 

There was woman's fearless eye. 

Lit by her deep love's truth; 
There was manhood's brow serenely high. 

And the fiery heart of youth. 

What sought they thus afar? 

Bright jewels of the mine? 
The wealth of seas, the spoils of war? — 

They sought a faith's pure shrine! 

Aye, call it holy groimd. 

The soil where first they trod! 
They have left imstain'd what there they foimd — 

Freedom to worship God! 

— MRS. HEMANS 

Oration, Hon. Henbt Cabot Lodge 

Hymn, Plymouth Men's Chorus 

Wild was the day; the wintry sea 

Moaned sadly on New England's strand. 

When first, the thoughtful and the free. 
Our fathers, trod the desert land. 

They little thought how pure a light 

With years should gather round that day; 

How love should keep their memories bright. 
How wide a realm their sons should sway. 

Green are their bays; and greener still 

Shall round their spreading fame be wreathed, 

And regions now untrod shall thrill 

With reverence, when their names are breathed. 

Till where the sun, with softer fires. 

Looks on the vast Pacific's sleep. 
The children of the pilgrim sires. 

This hallowed day Uke us shall keep. 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

Benediction, . . , . . Rev. Theodore E. Busfield, D.D. 



PRAYER 

Reverend ARTHUR B. WHITNEY 



PRAYER 



Spirit of light, and ever more Light, — God of our fathers' 
faith ! Humble us to thank thee meekly for them, the brave, 
the kind, the true, who having lived yet live. How constant 
art thou unto sons who fear thee, fearing naught beside; 
who revere thee, and their need is met! We praise thee for 
the work they wrought, who were poor in all the goods of 
earth, rich in the knowledge of thy Law; who in pain set up 
the first rude shelter here — who builded here an House of 
Life so vast that under its wide roof is room for a world of 
men. 

While hearts beat high with the emotions of this hour, 
this day, let us not cease to think how it was thy Hand led 
them forth, three hundred years ago, and held them safe, 
to their desired haven. Endue us with some part of their 
stern and patient wisdom of duty, their Pilgrim quietness 
of soul. 

O strong and loving Father of mankind! To our dear 
country bring in again the good and godly order, as of old; 
that the days of this free people may be long in the land the 
Lord their God gave to our fathers, — for we know, thy 
Promise doth not fail for evermore. Amen. 



ADDRESS 

HIS EXCELLENCY GOVERNOR CALVIN COOLIDGE 



THE PILGRIMS 



Three centuries ago to-day the Pilgrims of the "May- 
flower" made final landing at Plymouth Rock. They came 
not merely from the shores of the Old World. It will be 
in vain to search among recorded maps and history for 
their origin. They sailed up out of the infinite. 

There was among them small trace of the vanities of 
life. They came undecked with orders of nobility. They 
were not children of fortune but of tribulation. Persecu- 
tion, not preference, brought them hither; but it was a 
persecution in which they found a stern satisfaction. They 
cared little for titles, still less for the goods of this earth, 
but for an idea they would die. Measured by the standards 
of men of their time they were the humble of the earth. 
Measured by later accomplishments they were the mighty. 
In appearance weak and persecuted they came, — rejected, 
despised, an insignificant band; in reality, strong and in- 
dependent, a mighty host, of whom the world was not 
worthy, destined to free mankind. No captain ever led 
his forces to such a conquest. Oblivious to rank, yet men 
trace to them their lineage as to a royal house. 

Forces not ruled by man had laid their unwilling course. 
As they landed, a sentinel of Providence, humbler, nearer 
to nature than themselves, welcomed them in their own 
tongue. They came seeking only an abiding place on 
earth, "but lifted up their eyes to heaven, their dearest 
country," says Governor Bradford, "where God hath 
prepared for them a city." On that abiding faith has 
been reared an empire magnificent beyond their dreams 
of Paradise. 

Amid the solitude they set up hearthstone and altar; 
the home and the church. With arms in their hands they 
wrung from the soil their bread. With arms they gathered 
in the congregation to worship Almighty God. But they 



18 

were armed, that in peace they might seek divine guidance 
in righteousness; not that they might prevail by force, 
but that they might do right though they perished. 

What an increase, material and spiritual, three hundred 
years has brought that little company is known to all the 
earth. No Uke body ever cast so great an influence on 
human history. Civilization has made of their landing 
place a shrine. Unto the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
has been entrusted the keeping of that shrine. To her has 
come the precious heritage. It will be kept as it was 
created, or it will perish, not with an earthly pride but 
with a heavenly vision. 

Plymouth Rock does not mark a beginning or an end. 
It marks a revelation of that which is without beginning 
and without end, — a purpose, shining through eternity 
with a resplendent light, undimmed even by the imper- 
fections of men; and a response, an answering purpose, 
from those who, oblivious, disdainful of all else, sailed 
hither seeking only for an avenue for the immortal soul. 



1620-1920— A POEM 

LEBARON RUSSELL BRIGGS 

PROFESSOR IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY 



1620-1920 



Before him rolls the dark, relentless ocean; 
Behind him stretch the cold and barren sands; 
Wrapt in the mantle of his deep devotion, 
The Pilgrim kneels, and clasps his lifted hands: 

" God of our fathers, who hast safely brought us 
Through seas and sorrows, famine, fire, and sword; 
Who, in Thy mercies manifold hast taught us 
To trust in Thee, our leader and our Lord; 

" God, who hast sent Thy truth to shine before us, 
A fiery pillar, beaconing on the sea; 
God, who hast spread Thy wings of mercy o'er us; 
God, who hast set our children's children free, 

"Freedom Thy new-bom nation here shall cherish; 
Grant us Thy covenant, imchanging, sure: 
Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish; 
Freedom and Truth, immortal shall endure." 



Face to the Indian arrows, 

Face to the Prussian gims. 

From then till now the Pilgrim's vow 

Has held the Pilgrim's sons. 

He braved the red man's ambush; 
He loosed the black man's chain; 
BUs spirit broke King George's yoke 
And the battleships of Spain. 



22 



He crossed the seething ocean; 
He dared the death-strewn track; 
He charged in the hell of Saint Mihiel 
And hurled the tyrant back. 

For the voice of the lonely Pilgrim 
Who knelt upon the strand 
A people hears three hundred years 
In the conscience of the land. 



Daughter of Truth and mother of Courage, 

Conscience, all hail! 

Heart of New England, strength of the Pilgrim, 

Thou shalt prevail. 

Look how the empires rise and fall! 

Athens robed in her learning and beauty, 

Rome in her royal lust of power — 

Each has flourished her little hour. 

Risen and fallen and ceased to be. 

What of her by the western sea. 

Bom and bred as the child of Duty, 

Sternest of them all? 

She it is, and she alone 

Who built on faith as her comer stone; 

Of all the nations none but she 

Knew that the truth shaU make us free. 

Daughter of Courage, mother of heroes, 

Freedom divine. 

Light of New England, star of the Pilgrim, 

Still shalt thou shine. 



Yet even as we in our pride rejoice. 
Hark to the prophet's warning voice: 



23 

"The PUgrim's thrift is vanished, 

And the Pilgrim's faith is dead, 

And the Pilgrim's God is banished. 

And Mammon reigns in his stead; 

And work is damned as an evil. 

And men and women cry. 

In their restless haste, 'Let us spend and waste,. 

And live; for to-morrow we die.' 

"And law is trampled imder; 

And the nations stand aghast, 

As they hear the distant thunder 

Of the storm that marches fast; 

And we, — whose ocean borders 

Shut off the sound and the sight, — 

We will wait for marching orders; 

The world has seen us fight; 

We have earned our days of revel; 

* On with the dance ! ' we cry. 

*It is pain to think; we will eat and drink. 

And live — for to-morrow we die. 

" 'We have laughed in the eyes of danger; 

We have given our bravest and best; 

We have succored the starving stranger; 

Others shall heed the rest.' 

And the revel never ceases; 

And the nations hold their breath; 

And our laughter peals, and the mad world reels 

To a carnival of death. 

" Slaves of sloth and the senses. 
Clippers of Freedom's wings, 
Come back to the Pilgrim's army 
And fight for the King of Kings; 
Come back to the Pilgrim's conscience; 
Be bom in the nation's birth; 
And strive again as simple men 
For the freedom of the earth. 



24 



"Freedom a free-bom nation still shall cherish; 
Be this our covenant, unchanging, sure: 
Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish; 
Freedom and Truth immortal shall endure." 



Land of our fathers, when the tempest rages, 
When the wide earth is racked with war and crime, 
Founded for ever on the Rock of Ages, 
Beaten in vain by surging seas of time, 

Even as the shallop on the breakers riding, 
Even as the Pilgrim kneeling on the shore, 
Firm in thy faith and fortitude abiding. 
Hold thou thy children free for ever more. 



And when we sail as Pilgrims' sons and daughters 
The spirit's Mayflower into seas imknown. 
Driving across the waste of wintry waters 
The voyage every soul shall make alone, 

The Pilgrim's faith, the Pilgrim's courage grant us; 
Still shines the truth that for the Pilgrim shone. 
We are his seed; nor life nor death shall daunt us. 
The port is Freedom! Pilgrim heart, sail on! 



ORATION 

Honorable HENRY CABOT LODGE 
Senator from Massachusetts 



THE PILGRIMS OF PLYMOUTH 



We meet here to-day because the calendar tells us that 
three hundred years have elapsed since a small band of 
English men and women landed at this spot and set them- 
selves to work to conquer the wilderness and found a state. 
Three centuries are but an indistinguishable point in the 
vast tracts of time dimly marked by geologic periods in the 
history of our planet. They are a negligible space in the 
thousands of years which have passed since man first 
appeared on the earth. Even within the narrow limits of 
recorded history they fill but a trifling place if we are con- 
cerned only with chronology. We live, however, in a com- 
parative world. Geologically and even racially three cen- 
turies are not worth computing, but to the men and nations 
who have been concerned in the making of what is called 
modem history, dating from the beginning of the Renais- 
sance in Italy, they extend very nearly to the visible hori- 
zon. If we go a step further and measure by man's own 
life and by the brief existence of the doers of the historic 
deed as well as of those who now try to recall the great 
event, our three centuries as we glance backward, like 
Shelley's "lone and level sands," stretch far away. In the 
familiar fable of the insects, whose term of life is but a 
day and whose most aged members are those who totter 
on to sunset, twelve hours is the test of time, and to them 
three hundred years would seem like the aeons through 
which the earth has passed during its unresting journey 
in stellar space. After all, our only measure must be the 
lives of the men who acted and of the men who celebrate, 
and to us the Pilgrims seem remote indeed. The solemn 
dignity of the past is as much theirs as if they had been 
those of the human race who drew the pictures in the caves 
of the Dordogne, or laid deep the foundations of the Pyra- 
mids. In any event, whether the three hundred years are 



28 

absolutely a short period or relatively a long one the number 
of the centuries is not alone sufficient to determine their 
right to make men pause and consider them for a few mo- 
ments at the date which marks their end. There is no 
more reason to celebrate the mere passage of time than to 
rejoice over the precession of the equinoxes. The value 
and meaning to be found in the ending of any artificial, 
calendar-made period exist only in the deed or the event 
which in some fashion has lived on in the minds of men 
through one or three or ten centuries. The act of commemo- 
ration or celebration must be justified by its subject. Thomas 
Parr is believed, on the authority of John Taylor, the Water 
Poet, to have lived over one hundred and fifty years, which 
is wholly unimportant except as an evidence of the possi- 
bilities of human longevity. Keats died before he had com- 
pleted his twenty-sixth year, but he had created things of 
beauty which will be joys forever. Scott's principle of 
the "crowded hour of glorious life" which is worth "an 
age without a name" is the touchstone which will tell us 
whether a man, a deed or an event is current gold indeed. 
Thus shall we discover the real character of the event for 
the sake of which we turn aside from the noisy traffic of 
the moment in order that we may look upon it and meditate 
upon its meaning. In this way we shall learn whether we 
celebrate something of world effect or an incident of the 
past which merely touches the memories or the pride of 
a neighborhood. 

Can there be any question that the landing of those whom 
we affectionately call "Pilgrims" upon the edge of the North 
American wilderness meets the test of Scott's famous lines? 
I believe that, among those who take the trouble to think, 
there can be but one answer to this inquiry. Let us, how- 
ever, go a step further and apply certain other tests. 

Seventy years ago a distinguished English historian pub- 
lished a book entitled "Fifteen Decisive Battles of the 
World," a work of authority which still holds its place in 
literature. If Sir Edward Creasy had lived until 1920 he 
would undoubtedly have slightly increased the number of 
his battles, but that would in no wise affect the leading 



29 

impression suggested by his book. The first thought 
awakened by the title as well as by the book itself is one 
of astonishment that an expert student and historian, sur- 
veying the long story of the well-nigh perpetual fighting 
which has darkened and reddened the movement of man- 
kind across the centuries, could in 1851 find only fifteen 
battles to which he felt, after much consideration and weigh- 
ing of testimony, that he could properly apply the word 
"decisive." Only fifteen battles out of the thousands, alas, 
which have been fought by men were selected by a compe- 
tent judge as having by their result settled the fate of nations 
or permanently affected the history of the world. 

As with battles so it is with other events great and small, 
the creatures of each succeeding day which, ever since man 
has attempted to make any record of himself and his doings, 
have gone whirling past in countless swarms only to be 
engulfed in the relentless ocean of time. At the moment 
they all, even the most minute, were of meaning and con- 
cern to some one, perhaps to many more than one among 
the children of men, and they are, nearly all, as dead and 
forgotten as those whom they grieved or gladdened at the 
instant when they flitted by. Almost infinitely small is 
the proportion which have even found a record, whether 
carved on stone or set down in books and manuscripts. ^,Of 
those thus preserved, how few, how very few, stand out 
clearly to us across the ages or the centuries as decisive, un- 
forgetable, because they determined the course of history 
and gave a lasting direction to the fortunes of mankind. 
They rise before us as we try to look back over the dim, 
receding past like distant mountain peaks where the rose 
of sunset lingers, or solitary light-towers set above reefs 
and shoals in lonely seas. 

When we approach an anniversary the first question 
which confronts us then is whether it holds a place among 
the rare events which may be called decisive, or is memor- 
able only to those who celebrate it. The inquiry, as a rule, 
is easily answered by a little reflection, and the great and 
decisive events of history are usually beyond dispute. No 
one, for example, can question that Greek thought has 



30 

profoundly influenced all western civilization for twenty- 
five hundred years, and therefore the repulse of the Persians, 
the spread of the Greek colonies to the westward, the con- 
quests of Alexander reaching to the borders of India, which 
gave opportunity and scope to Greek culture, were in the 
largest sense decisive events in the history of the world. 
There can be no doubt that the battle of Chalons, which 
saved western Europe from the savage hordes of Asia, and 
the battle of Tours, which arrested the advance of Islam, 
were in the highest degree "decisive" events. Seven hun- 
dred years ago John of England signed at Runnymede a 
certain document known as the Magna Carta. The last 
anniversary came in June, 1915, in the midst of the war 
with Germany, when men had no time to give to the cele- 
bration of past events, and yet the signing of the great char- 
ter was quietly but duly and fittingly noticed and com- 
memorated, both in England and the United States. Even 
in that hour of peril and confusion people did not forget 
what had happened seven hundred years before, because 
on that June day a deed was done which has affected the 
development of the English-speaking people down to the 
present moment, and thus has been decisive in world his- 
tory. The endless and fruitless wars of England in her 
attempt to conquer France, which fill the old chronicles, 
have faded away, and the signing of a document remains 
still vivid to men. It is equally certain that the voyage of 
Columbus was an event, momentous alike to the Old World 
and the New, and the great adventurer has two continents 
as his monument. 

I can hear, as I give these few illustrations of the princi- 
ple I seek to establish, the peevish, meaningless objection 
that if Miltiades had not won Marathon, if Alexander had 
never existed, if Aetius had failed at Chdlons and Charles 
Martel at Tours, if the Barons of England had not con- 
trolled King John, if Columbus had never reached America, 
somebody else would have done all these things, for the 
time was ripe and they would surely have come to pass. 
Envy and jealousy are not confined to the present. In one 
form or another they reach across the abysm of time, and 



81 

no honored grave is safe from their creeping attack. More- 
over, the hypotheses of history attractive to certain minds 
are often ingenious, occasionally amusing and suggestive, 
almost invariably profitless and unremunerative. The 
"might have beens" have no claim to celebration. That 
which alone is entitled to this high honor is "what was." 
The actual deed and the men who did the deed which "breaks 
the horizon's level line," not those who did not do it, even 
if they thought about it, alone deserve honor, reverence 
and commemoration. 

Can we, then, justly place what happened here at Plym- 
outh, and the men and women to whom we owe the great 
act, in the small, high class of "decisive" events due to 
the actual doers of great deeds.?* Clearly, I think we can. 
Jamestown and Plymouth were the cornerstones of the 
foundations upon which the great fabric of the United States 
has been built up, and the United States is to-day one of 
the dominant factors in the history and in the future of the 
world of men. The nation thus brought into being has 
affected the entire course of western civilization, and largely 
helped to determine its fate, which, shaken and clouded 
by the most desolating of wars, is now trembling in the 
balance. Saratoga stands with Marathon and Waterloo 
in Sir Edward Creasy's book as one of the decisive battles 
of the world. There is no need to go further to find the 
meaning in history of what the Pilgrims did. 

I shall not attempt to rehearse the story of the little band 
of men and women who landed here on a December day 
three hundred years ago. It is as familiar to our ears as 
a twice-told tale, as ready on our lips as household words. 
It has awakened the imagination of poet and painter and 
novelist. It has engaged the attention and the research 
of antiquarians and writers of history. Societies have been 
formed to trace out the descendants of the Pilgrims, and 
those who can claim them as ancestors would not change 
their lineage for any that could be furnished by the com- 
pilers of peerages. 

They were humble folk, for the most part, these passengers 
of the "Mayflower," — handicraftsmen, fishers, ploughmen. 



32 

with some wise leaders possessed of education and who had 
held established position in their native land. But the 
fact is too often overlooked that these same humble folk 
were the offspring of a great period filled with the exuberant, 
adventurous spirit of youth, moving and stirring in every 
field of human thought and human activity. They were 
the contemporaries of Raleigh, of Shakespeare and of Bacon, 
and were the true children of their wonderful age, with 
all its hopes and daring courage strong within them. We 
know how they started, imbued and uplifted by the deep 
resolve to worship God in their own way, which to them 
meant more than all the world beside could offer. We see 
them leaving the villages of Yorkshire and East Anglia, 
driven back from the shore, arrested, harried by soldiers, 
finally making their way to Holland, settling in Amsterdam 
and then in Leyden. A few years pass in peace and quiet, 
but the thought that they are losing their nationality and 
their language preys upon them, and they prayerfully and 
very solemnly determine that they will preserve these 
precious possessions by seeking a home in the New World, 
and still keep secure the opportunity to worship God in 
the way that is their own. It is a terrifying adventure. 
Some will not face it, stay behind, are absorbed in the popu- 
lation of Holland, and disappear from history. But others 
have a finer courage, and go forth determined henceforth 
to fill a place not to be forgotten by coming generations. 
Through many difficulties they procure two ships, the 
"Speedwell" at Delftshaven, the famous "Mayflower" at 
Southampton, and slowly make their way down the channel 
to Plymouth. Further delays and obstacles surround them. 
The "Speedwell" is forced to return, and it is not until Sep- 
tember 16, on our reckoning, that the "Mayflower" sets out 
alone upon her long journey. Two months nearly are occu- 
pied by the voyage across the stormy waters of the North 
Atlantic and in searching the coast for a landing. It is the 
21st of November when they disembark at Provincetown. 
Then comes a month of exploring the neighboring coast, 
the signing of the compact, and the landing which we have 
elected to celebrate on December 21. During the shortest 



33 

days, at the worst season, on the edge of the unbroken wilder- 
ness they planted themselves by the seaside, and the great 
experiment began. Famine and disease met them at the 
threshold. Half the people died during that cruel winter. 
But they held on, clinging desperately to the land which 
they had chosen, and the grip then taken was never broken. 
Never after that first awful winter, marked forever by the 
clustering graves on Cole's Hill, did they go backward. 
There was still much suffering to be endured, many dangers 
to be faced, perils from the Indians, failure of support, be- 
trayals, even, by those in England who should have sus- 
tained them. But they held on and advanced. It was a 
painfully slow advance, but always the movement was 
forward. As told in Bradford's truly wonderful journal 
and in "Winslow's Relation" it is an epic poem written 
in seventeenth century English, in the language of Shakes- 
peare and Milton, because they had no other. For ten 
years they were the only English settlement north of the 
Chesapeake, — the only settlement in that vast northern 
region which rose high above the level of a trading post or 
fishing station. They farmed their lands, ploughed and 
fished and traded; but they also established their church 
and worshipped God in their own fashion, founded a state 
and organized an efficient government. They were masters 
of their fate; they had begun the conquest of the wilderness; 
their march was ever onward and their hold was never re- 
laxed. Ten years passed, and then in 1629 and 1630 came 
Endicott and Winthrop to Salem and Boston. The power- 
ful Puritan organization with its twenty thousand immi- 
grants in the next decade had begun. The perils of Plym- 
outh were over. Henceforth they were sheltered and over- 
shadowed by their strong neighbors and friends on Massa- 
chusetts Bay. In 1643 they joined the New England 
Confederation, and their history was merged in that of the 
other larger colonies. Before the century closed, the existing 
fact was embodied in law, and Plymouth became part of 
Massachusetts. But what the Pilgrims had achieved in 
those first ten years could never be absorbed in the work 
of other men. The deed they did, the victory they had won 



34 

alone upon the shores of New England, stand out monu- 
mentally upon the highway of history for after ages to 
admire and reverence, and it was all their own. I shall say 
no more at this point of the Pilgrim of Plymouth as he lived 
on earth. I shall not now or later indulge in needless eulogy, 
still less shall I seek to draw his frailties from their dread 
abode. My only purpose is to try to determine what his 
history has been since the grave closed over him; what he 
has accomplished among the generations which have fol- 
lowed him. 

That which now concerns us most, as it seems to me, is 
first, to know what has come from the work of the Pilgrims 
who thus influenced history and affected the fate of west- 
ern civilization as they fought for life and struggled forward 
and suffered and died on the spot they called New Plym- 
outh. Next, and more important, we must consider just 
what they were, these Pilgrims, and what meaning they 
had for our predecessors and now have for us. Above all, 
let us find out if possible what lessons they teach which 
will help us in the present and aid us to meet the imperious 
future ever knocking at the door. Nations which neglect 
their past are not worthy of a future, and those which live 
exclusively upon their past have the marks of decadence 
stamped upon them. We must look before and after, and 
from the doers of high deeds, from the makers of the rare 
events decisive in history, we must seek for light and lead- 
ing, for help in facing the known and in shaping as best 
we may the forces which govern the unknown. 

Before we undertake to summarize the Pilgrims them- 
selves, and try rightly to judge their qualities of mind and 
character, I think we can best open the way to them and 
to their meaning to-day by considering the movement of 
opinion in regard to them and what they did. In this way 
alone, I think, shall we be able to see them in proper per- 
spective and with a due sense of proportion. 

The realization of the importance of the Pilgrims' work 
and of their place in history came but slowly in England; 
not, in fact, until Macaulay and Carlyle put the Puritans 
into their true position in the period they so largely con- 



35 

trolled. Yet the Plymouth settlers themselves had deep 
down in their hearts a sense of the magnitude of what they 
were doing, which is at once strange and impressive. I must 
turn as usual to the imagination of the poet to find fit expres- 
sion of what I mean. When Lowell makes Concord Bridge 
*' break forth and prophesy" he speaks first of the earliest 
time, of the — 

Brown foiindlin* o' the woods, whose baby bed 
Was prowled roun' by the Injun's cracklin' tread, 
An' who grew'st strong thru shifts an' wants an' pains, 
Nussed by stern men with empires in their brains. 
Who saw in vision their young Ishmel strain 
With each hard hand a vassal ocean's mane. 

There we have in a few noble and echoing words an 
arresting impression which seizes upon the attention of 
any one who studies carefully the journals and corre- 
spondence of the founders of Plymouth. Gradually as we 
read there comes sharply outlined before us visible through 
the mist of details concerning supplies and ships, money 
diflBculties and trading ventures, Indians and the farms 
and fortunes of the little colony from day to day, a vivid 
picture of the "stern men with empires in their brains." 
It is not set down in black and white, but it is clearer than 
anything else, to those who look into it with considerate 
eyes, that these men, the leaders especially, had a profound 
consciousness that they were engaged in a vastly greater 
task than establishing a colony. They felt in the depths 
of their being that they were laying the foundation of an 
empire — of a mighty nation. The outlines were all dim, 
the details did not exist, but the great, luminous vision of 
a picture they would never see was there, and they beheld 
it as they gazed upward, looking far beyond the dark forest, 
the unbroken solitude and the wastes of ocean at their gates. 
We cannot escape the belief that these Pilgrims in their 
hearts were confident that, as expressed in the verse of a 
true poet ^ of our own time, what they said and did would yet 
be heard "like a new song that waits for distant years." 

' Edwin Arlington Robinson. 



36 

We seem, in the words of their great contemporary then 
so recently dead, to catch a ghmpse, in these poor strug- 
gling people of the "Mayflower," of — 

The prophetic soul 
Of the wide world dreaming of things to come. 

The vision faded when the pioneers passed away — the 
eponymous and autochthonous heroes, as the Greeks would 
have called them if they had come up out of the darkness 
where myths are born and history never written. 

And there is something besides this dream of empire 
which, as we study the ancient faded records, leaps out 
like Shakespeare's "golden word" and sinks deep into 
our consciousness. This was the quick and strong attach- 
ment of these men and women for the untamed land which 
had greeted them so harshly and which made to them no 
glittering promises. Why did this happen? Whence came 
this feeling for this New World, as unknown to them as 
to their ancestors, destitute alike of traditions and of the 
tender associations which bind men to the country of their 
birth? They were loyal to their race, to their language, 
to England and to England's King. But from the first 
their love and hope were fastened here in America. The 
reason is not, I think, far to seek. They had crossed the 
ocean primarily that they might be able to worship God 
as seemed best in their own eyes, but they also meant to 
free themselves from the Old World where oppression had 
been their portion, and henceforth know no home but 
America. They meant to be Americans, although they 
never probably used the word, and to have their home 
here and make this country first in their thoughts as in their 
affections. However much they suffered they seem never 
to have repined. They meant to leave England which they 
loved, and Holland which had so kindly treated them, and 
they cast no longing, lingering look behind. In them we 
can see that even in those first bleak years the passion for 
America had cast out the passion for Europe, and in the 
process of the years grew ever stronger, more compelling, 
more overmastering, as colonies became states and states 



37 

a nation, rising unhelped but surely to the perilous heights 
of world power. 

These deep but unspoken and undefined emotions and 
aspirations of the Pilgrims did not sweep on through the 
succeeding years with ever-gathering strength. The waves 
sank and rose; the halts came in the onward march as is 
common in the progress of forces which must travel far 
before they ultimately move the world. This was apparent 
even in the days which followed the gradual passing away 
of the Pilgrims. Success and security enlarged the daily 
interests of life, hard and simple as it was; worldly hopes 
grew stronger; the children ceased to dream the dreams 
or see clearly the visions vouchsafed to their fathers, — 
to those who had made existence in America possible, — 
but the spirit of the first comers was never lost, and deep 
down in their very being guided and led the succeeding 
generations. 

The hundredth anniversary of the landing came and 
went, so far as we can learn, quite unnoticed and unmarked. 
The far-flung aspirations of the beginners had gone; the 
backward, penetrating glance of history, of the seekers of 
the buried treasures of the past, had not yet come. Half 
a century more was to elapse before the fact that here in 
Plymouth something had once happened which merited 
celebration and made such demand for the outward signs 
of remembrance as to insist upon a visible manifestation. 
In January, 1769, a club was started by twelve young men 
of Plymouth, and in the following December they decided 
to have a dinner on December 22 in commemoration of 
the landing of the Pilgrims. Accordingly, upon that day 
there was a procession, and then a dinner was eaten and 
toasts were given in honor of the leaders among the founders 
of the settlement. The following year, on the one hundred 
and fiftieth anniversary, the people here again held a cele- 
bration, and this time they had an oration described in 
the record as "words spoken with modesty and firmness" 
by Edward Winslow, and there was also a poem by Alexander 
Scammell. These commemorations went on through the 
years of the Revolution, until 1780, and then came an unex- 



38 

plained gap of twelve years until 1793, when the celebra- 
tion of the anniversary was again renewed, and continued 
thereafter with the omission only of 1799. The ceremonies 
expanded with the years, and a discourse by the clergyman 
and an address by some outsider of distinction became 
recognized accompaniments of the proceedings. Politics 
entered into the speech making, and the toasts and the par- 
takers in them made it very clear that while they celebrated 
as Americans they did not forget that they were also Feder- 
alists. 

In Boston the commemorations of the Pilgrims suggested 
in 1774 began with a formal and public celebration in 1798. 
There was an elaborate dinner, a very long list of toasts, 
including many which were both contemporary and po- 
litical, much speech making, and an "Elegant and Patriotic 
Ode" by Mr. Thomas Paine was duly sung, doubtless with 
ardent enthusiasm. 

From these modest beginnings in Plymouth and Boston 
the celebrations of what came to be called "Forefathers' 
Day" multiplied beyond enumeration, following the mi- 
grations of the "Mayflower" descendants and of the chil- 
dren of New England across the continent, until now in 
ever-increasing numbers the anniversary of the landing 
in 1620 is marked and celebrated with each recurring year 
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The deeds of the little 
band of hunted men and women who fled from England 
to Holland and thence to the New World have come into 
their own. They are, as Henry V prophesied on the eve 
of Agincourt, "freshly remembered," and have taken a 
place in the thoughts of uncounted thousands in a manner 
permitted only to an event decisive in the world's history. 
It would be quite impossible to trace or even to count 
these endless acts of commemoration, interesting as it would 
be to show in this way the development of public opinion 
about the results of the Plymouth landing as the accumulat- 
ing years made the scattered little settlements of the At- 
lantic coast into a great nation, and ever threw into higher 
relief the achievement of the followers and companions 
of Bradford and Winslow. It would be hardly less impos- 



39 

sible to review the addresses made by well-known men 
upon the coming of the "Mayflower," and analyze and 
consider the critical conclusions and the thoughts thus 
expressed. In the roll of those who have spoken gravely 
and seriously about the foundation of Plymouth is included 
a very large representation of the men who in our history 
have attained high distinction in the pulpit, at the bar, in 
literature and in public life. You will find there orators 
and poets, philosophers and historians, Presidents, Govern- 
ors of states, Senators and leaders of the House of Repre- 
sentatives. It is an imposing list not without significance. 
Limited by time and space I shall call up to remembrance 
only one past celebration and only one speaker who made 
that particular day famous, and who was at once interpreter 
of the past and prophet of the future. That occasion and 
the man who then spoke stand out very distinctly and very 
radiantly against the background of the dead years, charged 
with much deep meaning to all who consider them and above 
all competitors however eminent. 

In 1820, on the two hundredth anniversary of the land- 
ing, Daniel Webster delivered what has always been known 
as the "Plymouth Oration." We are apt unconsciously, 
I believe, in looking backward to the days which are gone, 
to think of a century as a whole, and if we are trying to 
picture to ourselves at a given moment a certain man, we 
are prone to treat him as if his life was at that instant com- 
plete as we now know it. If we are to judge rightly and 
really draw forth the lesson we perchance are seeking we 
must force ourselves to remember just what sort of a world 
it was at the historic moment which is in our thoughts, 
and not confuse the actors or the occasion with after years 
familiar in history to us but an unknown future to them. 

The year 1820 began with the death of George III, an 
old man, blind, demented, almost forgotten, a pathetic 
figure not without suggestion to the moralist. He had come 
to the throne in 1760; he was the King of the elder and 
younger Pitt, of the Foxes, father and son, of Burke and 
Johnson, of Reynolds and Garrick and Goldsmith. He was 
an eighteenth century King. George IV, of unsavory mem- 



40 

ory, a child of the eighteenth century, was King of England 
when Webster spoke at Plymouth, and a Bourbon was reign- 
ing in France as Louis XVIII. Europe just then had gone 
back to the old days and the old systems, and the French 
Revolution seemed to those in power like an evil dream. 
Metternich, at least, and many others were convinced that 
the Revolution was a nightmare which had passed as a 
watch in the night, and that everything was henceforth to 
go on in the good old way. The successful revolt of the 
American colonies had passed before their eyes and taught 
them nothing. From the uprising of France and from the 
Napoleonic wars they had learned little more, frightful as 
the shock had been, for had they not finally defeated 
Napoleon and crushed democracy at Waterloo.'* They were 
unable to see that the failure of the French Revolution was 
only apparent. The force of the Revolution had passed 
into the hands of a great military genius who betrayed its 
principles and sought merely to erect on the ruins of the 
old autocracies a worldwide despotism of his own. France 
under Napoleon went to defeat at Waterloo, but the revolu- 
tion which France had wrought was not conquered; the 
work the French had done a quarter of a century earlier 
could not be undone any more than the American colonies 
could be returned to England. The Democratic movement 
was not crushed on the plains of Waterloo, but was only 
freed from its most dangerous foe, born and equipped in 
its own household. In fact, it was the uprising of the people 
in the countries conquered by Napoleon which alone enabled 
banded Europe to defeat him. Metternich and his em- 
perors and kings mistook a lull in the storm for a lasting 
calm. They did not realize that they were in the center 
of the cyclone, and that the other side must yet be traversed. 
They found it out in 1830 and 1848, but in 1820 they believed 
that all was well, and that the old system would go on better 
than ever and for an indefinite period. Had they not es- 
tablished their Holy Alliance to control all nations and put 
an end to every attempt to assert the rights of the people? 
They did not understand the portents even then to be seen 
in the world about them. England in those very years 



41 

was beginning to awaken to the perils of the AlHance called 
Holy, and was preparing to leave it. Far away states in 
South America were insisting that they would not return 
to the domination of Spain, and presently a voice was to be 
heard from the northern continent of the New World de- 
claring, with England in full sympathy, that the Old World 
was not to control the New. Very shocking all this to Met- 
ternich and Polignac and the Czar of Russia and other right- 
thinking persons, and yet not to be gainsaid. Still nothing 
was learned, and in 1820 the worst qualities of the eighteenth 
century seemed to have returned to power. 

In that same year, moreover, no alterations of deep effect 
upon the daily affairs of men had yet arrived. A little 
steamboat had made its way up the Hudson; others were 
appearing, but sails still carried the world's traffic over the 
wide oceans. The first operating steam railroad was still 
ten years in the future, and twenty years were to elapse 
before the coming of the telegraph, — the two discoveries 
which were to make a greater change in human environment 
than anything which had happened since the wheel, the 
hollow boat and the alphabetical signs for language had 
broken upon the world of men. People still relied upon 
horses and upon the winds for travel, and upon written 
letters for communication when separated. The modes and 
habits of life were still substantially the same as in the 
colonial days, and change is finally brought home to men 
only when it actually touches the routine and habits of their 
daily lives. As its restorers conceived it, the eighteenth 
century was really dead, but the outside manifestations 
which belonged to it were still unaltered, and it was with 
an eighteenth century atmosphere about him that Webster 
rose to speak at Plymouth, as much so as the coach which 
had brought him to his destination was a vehicle of the 
same period. Stage coach and atmosphere were alike on 
the very verge of disappearance; only ten years separated 
them from George Stephenson's railroad and from certain 
July days of 1830 in Paris, which Sir Walter Besant declared 
marked the real ending of the previous century, although 
the calendar had disposed of it long before. 



42 

But calendars are arbitrary things and do not always 
register all the facts correctly. It is with the real, the under- 
lying conditions that we are concerned when we try to revive 
the bygone scene witnessed in Plymouth in 1820 in order 
that we may see with the eyes of imagination the man who 
made that particular anniversary memorable. 

The people who gathered here to listen to the orator of 
the day did not look upon the Webster so familiar to us, 
who looms so large during the succeeding thirty years of 
the country's history. In 1820 Webster was only thirty- 
eight years old. He stood before his audience in the very 
prime of his early manhood. The imposing presence, the 
massive head, the wonderful voice, the dark, deep-set eyes 
burning, as Carlyle said, with a light like dull anthracite 
furnaces, the mouth "accurately closed," were then as they 
were to the end arresting, and held the attention of all who 
looked and listened. But the face was still smooth, the 
deep lines and tragic aspect of the latest portraits were 
lacking. 

The hope of unaccomplished years 
Seemed large and lucid round his brow. 

But they were "unaccomplished years,*' and one cannot 
help wondering how many then present even dimly guessed 
what he who spoke to them was to be, and to what heights 
he was destined to climb. In 1820 his public life had con- 
sisted of four years' service as member of Congress from 
New Hampshire, service distinguished but not extraor- 
dinary. He had removed to Boston and there begun his 
practice at the bar of Massachusetts. His second period 
in the House, his long years in the Senate, his service as 
Secretary of State were all in the future. Ten years were 
to pass before he reached his zenith in the reply to Hayne, — 
one of those rare speeches which has become an inseparable 
part of our history. The speech to the jury in the White 
murder case was yet to be made, and that which he was 
to deliver at Plymouth was the first of the occasional ad- 
dresses which so added to his fame, and which generations 
of schoolboys were fated to recite. In his profession alone 



43 

had he already given absolute proof of his future eminence. 
His argument in the Dartmouth College case had put him 
in the front rank at the American bar, but the world at 
large probably had little knowledge of the closing sentences 
of that argument, which must have revealed to those who 
heard him and to the few outsiders of penetrating and critical 
judgment that a great orator as well as a great lawyer was 
before them. If the Plymouth audience did not under- 
stand, and it was hardly possible that they should, that 
they were about to hear one of the great orators of all time 
they must have suspected, when Mr. Webster closed, that 
they had listened to an unusual man making a speech quite 
beyond anything they had ever heard before. 

We do not need to criticise or analyze the speech, — 
the Plymouth oration, to use the old-fashioned and more 
sonorous words. All that concerns us is to learn, if we can, 
Webster's attitude of mind in 1820, and what meaning the 
anniversary had to him, representing as he did the best 
thought of the time. Let me quote to you without any 
apology the fine and stately sentences with which he closed, 
for they are addressed directly to us, and it is for us to 
make reply. Here is his peroration: — 

The hours of this day are rapidly flying, and this occasion will soon 
be passed. Neither we nor our children can expect to behold its re- 
turn. They are in the distant regions of futurity; they exist only in the 
all-creating power of God, who shall stand here a hundred years hence 
to trace, through us, their descent from the Pilgrims, and to survey, as 
we have now surveyed, the progress of their country during the lapse of 
a century. We would anticipate their concurrence with us in our senti- 
ments of deep regard for our common ancestors. We would anticipate 
and partake the pleasure with which they will then recount the steps of 
New England's advancement. On the morning of that day, although it 
will not disturb us in our repose, the voice of acclamation and gratitude, 
commencing on the Rock of Plymouth, shall be transmitted through 
millions of the sons of the Pilgrims, till it lose itself in the murmurs of 
the Pacific seas. 

We would leave for the consideration of those who shall then occupy 
our places some proof that we hold the blessings transmitted from our 
fathers in just estimation; some proof of our attachment to the cause 
of good government, and of civil and religious liberty; some proof of a 
sincere and ardent desire to promote everything which may enlarge 
the understandings and improve the hearts of men. And when, from the 



44 

long distance of a hundred years, they shall look back upon us, they 
shall know, at least, that we possessed affections, which, running back- 
ward and warming with gratitude for what our ancestors have done for 
our happiness, run forward also to our posterity, and meet them with 
cordial salutation ere yet they have arrived on the shore of being. 

Advance, then, ye future generations! We would hail you, as you 
rise in your long succession, to fill the places which we now fill, and to 
taste the blessings of existence where we are passing, and soon shall 
have passed, our own human duration. We bid you welcome to this 
pleasant land of the fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful skies 
and the verdant fields of New England. We greet your accession to the 
great inheritance which we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the bless- 
ings of good government and religious liberty. We welcome you to the 
treasures of science and the delights of learning. We welcome you to 
the transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happiness of kindred, 
and parents, and children. We welcome you to the immeasurable bless- 
ings of rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, and the 
light of everlasting truth! 

Across the century comes to us the voice which so moved 
and charmed those who heard it. The appeal is to us, to 
the Americans who are now here upon the earth, and to 
no others. What have we to say in answer? What message 
do Webster's words convey to us? What meaning did he 
find in the work of the Pilgrims, and how did he interpret 
their simple and momentous story? How far do we go with 
him, where do our time and belief agree, and where do they 
contrast with his? What message does the "Mayflower'* 
with its precious freight bring to us, and what help can it 
give us when, like Webster, we bequeath the next century 
to those who come after us? Let us in our own way try 
as best we may to make reply. 

That which strikes us most forcibly is that Webster stand- 
ing here in the still lingering atmosphere of the eighteenth 
century, and with an eighteenth century background, speaks, 
throughout with the voice of the nineteenth century. The 
dominant note of the whole address is of the nineteenth 
century. The nineteenth century spirit pervades all he 
said, and the great characteristic of that spirit was in 
varying forms the belief in progress, in the perfectibility 
of man. With all he says of the Pilgrims we are in full 
accord. We can add nothing to the splendor of his praise^ 



45 

we assuredly would take nothing from it. But in the very 
beginning of the sentences I have quoted he speaks of 
surveying the progress of the country as the uppermost 
thought. We must not forget that the idea of the con- 
tinuous progress of man was then very recent, and we must 
carefully remember to draw the distinction which Webster 
failed to draw between the general recognition of the historic 
fact of progress familiar to antiquity and the idea of progress 
as a law governing humanity and constantly operating 
until the race should have vanished and the earth grown 
cold. The fact of progress is one thing, the law of progress 
is quite another and very diflPerent. A volume would be 
needed to set forth the arguments and subtle distinctions 
of the speculative thinkers, philosophers and men of science 
in the eighteenth century who gradually developed the 
idea of progress as a law. Not until the latter part of that 
century were the conception and the law really formulated, 
and even then they were by no means perfected. The most 
striking point in Webster's peroration was his appeal to 
posterity, because the care for posterity was one of the 
last propositions added to the law of progress, and yet it 
was the capstone of the edifice, since the law if it existed 
was inevitably altruistic, and was chiefly and necessarily 
concerned with future generations. This in itself shows 
how completely the idea of a law of progress and a belief 
in the evolution of mankind had either consciously or un- 
consciously taken possession of Webster's mind and heart. 
Not historic progress, nor material progress, nor progress 
in knowledge alone, but political, moral, spiritual and in- 
tellectual progress, all these and more, were included in 
the idea of human progress which did not perish at Water- 
loo, but was fated to be the ruling principle of the nineteenth 
century, the spirit of the century just ended, and of which 
we must give an account as Webster demanded. We can 
see now the beautiful vision gleaming through the red mists 
of the French Revolution, and behold it shining forth in 
the poems of Shelley. An exiled victim of political intoler- 
ance, he wrote : — 



46 

The world's great age begins anew. 

The golden years return. 
The earth doth like a snake renew 

Her winter weeds outworn; 
Heaven smiles and faiths and empires gleam 
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. 

Shelley was influenced, no doubt, by the Greek theory 
of returning cycles of civilizations rising to great heights 
only to decay and fall. But none the less noble is the ex- 
pression he here gives to the spirit which neither the English 
reaction, nor the genius of Napoleon, nor the battle of 
Waterloo could crush or extinguish. By its very nature 
it was able to survive defeat because it inevitably carried 
optimism with it, and it could not fail to appeal to masses 
of men who knew nothing of details, but who were moved 
by a doctrine which awakened hope for better things in 
a none too cheerful world. 

Webster's Plymouth oration is optimistic throughout. 
It is instinct with the spirit of the nineteenth century; 
with the conception of progress as it was finally perfected 
in the coming years. The only cloud that Webster sees on 
the horizon is slavery, which is described with all the power 
of his eloquence in the most famous passage of his speech. 
He saw plainly and with statesmanlike prevision the peril 
involved in slavery which threatened the future of his 
country, and he appealed to the spirit of the age against 
it. Even he could not guess that the spirit of the age would 
finally remove this curse from the land in a way which 
above all others he dreaded, and which darkly overshadowed 
his closing years. But this was the only black spot in the 
picture, and it is not surprising that, as he portrayed the 
early days of privation, suffering and struggle, reviewed 
the growth of the colonies, depicted the glory of the war 
for independence, and drew the contrast with the young 
nation before him advancing over the continent with leaps 
and bounds, his pride as an American should have risen 
and his confidence in the future have become unrestrained. 
For thirty memorable years he was to play a large part in 
the history of his time, and we to whom he appealed in 



47 

1820 can look back not only upon those years, but upon 
many more which have come and gone since he died at 
Marshfield. We can judge how far his hopes have been 
fulfilled, and inquire, before we attempt to bring the Plym- 
outh landing into relation with our own present and future, 
what the spirit of the age with which Webster was imbued 
has achieved as it has passed on across the hundred years 
which separate us from him when in 1820, he spoke here 
at Plymouth. 

Every century, apparently, has a poor opinion of its im- 
mediate predecessor. The generations which began with 
the nineteenth century and those which came up in it, grow- 
ing with its growth and strengthening with its strength, 
were unsparing in condemnation of all pertaining to the 
eighteenth. To the liberal and the reformer the century 
which gave us our independence seemed a period of op- 
pression and wrong, of the government of kings and oligar- 
chies. It was a time when there were no popular rights, 
and when men persecuted in the name of a religion in which 
many of the persecutors had themselves ceased to believe. 
Its heirs declared that it was an immoral age socially and 
politically, and the altruists that it was heartless and self- 
ish. Carlyle held a protracted commination service over 
its remains, although he was anything but a worshiper of 
his own time. He set the fashion for many lesser men, 
and the poor eighteenth century had no friends. The 
romantic movement swept the eighteenth century literature 
into the dust heaps, and treated its architecture with the 
same contempt which the eighteenth century itself had 
shown to the Gothic buildings which they spoke of as the 
work of barbarians. Horace Walpole, eighteenth century 
to the backbone, was looked upon in his owti day as a mere 
eccentric because he admired and imitated Gothic archi- 
tecture, and wrote the first fantastic and wildly romantic 
story which obtained a wide celebrity. Even the furniture 
of our great-grandfathers was broken up or hidden in garrets 
and kitchens, and if kept in use at all it was only with an 
apology on account of sentiment. 

Yet even before a hundred years had passed men began 



48 

to see that as in other portions of human history there was 
something to be said for this decried and much abused 
period which had given to the world, among others, George 
Washington and Benjamin Franklin. Was it not, after 
all, the century of the successful revolt of the American 
colonies which began the democratic movement; of the 
thinkers and philosophers who were gradually evolving 
and formulating the law of progress which was to rule in 
the approaching years; of the French Revolution which 
set nations free and broke beyond repair the despotisms 
large and small which held Europe in their grasp? Was 
it not the era of Voltaire and Rousseau and the encyclo- 
pedists, who, whatever we may think of them individually 
or of their characters and methods, fought against intol- 
erance and for the freedom of thought and conscience? 
Eighteenth century literature is now reassuming its proper 
place. Its art is once more prized and valued, its furniture 
is treasured; fine examples of it are almost priceless, and, 
without sacrificing our profound admiration of the wondrous 
art of the mediaeval builders of cathedrals, we have readopted 
the architecture of the Louis and the Georges with all its 
classic forms as that best suited in taste and construction 
to the needs and desires of modem life. 

Now, indeed, are the tables turned. The nineteenth 
century at this moment appears to be sadly out of fashion. 
There seems to be none so poor as to do it reverence. It 
does not even awaken the vigorous hostility which our 
grandfathers and fathers showed to the eighteenth century; 
it is satirized, laughed at and derided. Its furniture, the 
exponent of domestic taste, is absolutely scorned, quite 
justly, no doubt, for a wider knowledge condemns it on 
general principles, and even sentiment cannot defend it. 
Its art is likewise banned as entirely beyond excuse, al- 
though it is not well to be too wholesale and to forget the 
Barbizon school and some of the romantics and pre-Rapha- 
elites. The nineteenth century literature fares little better. 
Its hold upon the people and upon the affections of the 
great mass of those who read cannot be shaken, but that 
is set down by advanced persons as a proof of popular 



49 

ignorance. The critics who dread above all things not to 
be thought modern, and who are quick to mistake the 
chirp of the cricket for the song of the birds, those who 
cannot hear — 

. . . the bards sublime; 
Whose distant footsteps echo 
Through the corridors of time 

have only a sneer, or words of pity or patronage, for a cen- 
tury which began with Coleridge and Wordsworth, Byron 
and Shelley and Keats, and included in its course Victor 
Hugo, Emerson and Clough, Tennyson, Browning and 
Swinburne, Poe and Whitman. They are disposed to spare 
the last two because they are pleased to think one decadent 
and the other amorphous, but there is little mercy for 
the rest. They remember very vividly the deplorable 
ultra Victorian line at the end of Enoch Arden — 

. . . the little port 

Had never seen a costlier funeral, 

and forget that the same great poet wrote "Ulysses" and 
"The Lotus Eaters" and "In Memoriam" and "Maud," 
which will remain in all their beauty while English poetry 
exists. And some of the poetasters of the day follow suit 
and join the cry. They despise form, for, if they accept 
the forms and standards consecrated by the genius of men 
from the beginning of literature, they would not write at 
all, and formlessness is their chief reliance, because in this 
way they can best startle, shock or amaze, and thereby 
draw an attention otherwise lacking. It is not that they 
produce new forms, ever to be welcomed and studied, but 
that they reject all forms, and this it is which makes them 
such severe judges. If we turn to the realm of fiction it must 
be remembered that the nineteenth century was the age of 
Jane Austen and the Waverley Novels, of Dickens and 
Thackeray and Hawthorne, to mention only a few of those 
who stand out as most purely and conspicuously the repre- 
sentatives of their time. They had their defects easily 
to be discovered and pointed out, but they added to the 



50 

world of imagination a host of men and women, the crea- 
tions of their genius, who will ever be the undying com- 
panions of men, and keep their place with those whom 
Shakespeare and Cervantes gave the world to help and 
to rejoice humanity. In France it was the age of Balzac, 
and it is difficult to conceive what modern French literature 
would have been in the field of fiction without that mighty 
genius, or what a deduction there would have been made 
from human happiness if we had been deprived of Chicot 
and the Three Musketeers. 

I do not say this word in defence of the century in which 
a large part of the lives of many of us have been passed 
because I desire to be laudator temporis acti, a role peculiarly 
distasteful to me. On the contrary, I earnestly wish to — 

Keep the young generations in hail, 
And bequeath them no tumbled house. 

The first step for those who come after us, and who will, 
I trust, do better than we have done in our time, with the 
coming century which will be theirs, is to appraise with 
justice and discrimination the preceding period to which 
they are the heirs. To consider the near past without 
prejudice is essential to the success of those who live in the 
immediate present and are to be the trustees and guardians 
of the closely approaching future. 

I have used literature and art in their varied forms merely 
for illustration and as a plea for moderation when the pre- 
ceding century is led out for execution. But there are more 
serious questions and also far deeper meanings in the great 
century which has so recently gone. We may reject at 
once the idols of that period, apparent respectability and 
the steadfast ignoring of anything which by any stretch 
of the imagination could be called improper or coarse or 
indelicate. These limitations upon art and literature were 
both regarded as fetishes, and they often injured great 
work and laid the time open to the charge of being given 
to cant, an accusation unhappily not without foundation. 

But none of these things affect materially or even touch 
the deep underlying principle which dominated the nine- 



51 

teenth century and which still has a commanding influence 
upon the minds of men, especially and naturally in America. 
The spirit of the nineteenth century was belief in progress. 
"Always toward perfection is the mighty movement," 
said Herbert Spencer, who asserted that progress was a 
universal law, and the Darwinian theory was held to be 
the scientific demonstration of its immutability. As the 
century passed on the perpetual progress of man was con- 
fused with the material development of the time. Material 
progress has in truth gone far beyond anything which 
Webster predicted or even dreamed to be possible. Steam, 
electricity and the unresting labors of applied and mechanical 
science have utterly changed the conditions of man's life on 
earth. In the last fifty years there has been a more pro- 
found alteration in human environment, a greater difference 
created, than in all the centuries which elapsed between 
Marathon and Gettysburg. Wealth was torn from the 
earth with a speed which is stupefying; industry marvel- 
lously expanded; transport and communication well-nigh 
annihilated distance; and fortunes were piled up which 
went far beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. The teach- 
ings of the Manchester school discovered the reign of uni- 
versal peace in a trade formula, and the fevered search for 
quick profits and unlimited money all pressed the spirit 
of progress down toward a cash basis. 

But these were but the region clouds passing over the 
essential spirit of the age, which was the belief that the 
movement of mankind was ever upwards and onwards; 
that men would continually rise "on stepping stones of 
their dead selves to higher things." This was the spirit 
which both in England and the United States turned the 
thoughts of men and women to the conditions of labor and 
of the poor, and started the movement for their improve- 
ment with the factory acts, — a movement of altruism 
which has gone on with gathering force from that day to 
this, and the beneficence of which is even yet far from ex- 
hausted. It was the spirit which convinced men that human 
slavery was a hideous anachronism, and which inspired 
the great conflict that in the Civil War in the United States 



52 

preserved the Union, removed the darkest stain upon western 
civiHzation, and widened the area of freedom. It was the 
spirit which brought the resurrection and hberation of Italy, 
and forced the estabhshment of constitutional government 
in many countries where the rights of the people were as 
yet unknown. The men of 1848 beheved that if you could 
give every man a vote, an opportunity for education, set 
men free, and call the government a repubhc, all would 
be right with the world. We know now that there is no 
such panacea for human ills. We are well aware that the 
liberation of political development was only a limited phase 
of advance toward a better world. The sciences of anthro- 
pology and of archaeology, the study in all forms of man 
as distinguished from men, the relentless research of history, 
have revealed the astonishing permanence of human nature 
and human desires. There have been made painfully clear 
to us the racial and climatic, anatomical and physical 
differences among men, thus demonstrating the existence 
of conditions which make social development seem as slow, 
almost, as the operation of geologic changes in the earth's 
surface. We have learned in a measure that the reforms and 
advances which laws can bring to pass appear so small that 
we can only with difficulty realize that they all help, and 
that every little rivulet goes to swell the mighty stream, even 
as the slow processes of time and nature wear down the pri- 
meval rocks and transform the outlines of continents. The 
theories of Buckle have faded even from the memories of 
men, and no one now imagines that by environment and 
education a Hottentot can be turned into an Englishman. 
We are gradually learning not to confuse knowledge with 
original thought. That we vastly surpass our ancestors, near 
or remote, in knowledge is beyond question, but there is no 
evidence that we have better brains or greater unassisted 
intellectual power. We need take but one famous example 
from recorded history to prove this. No one would be 
bold enough to assert that we have ever produced men 
of greater intellect, or with a larger native strength in 
original thought, than the race who gave us Democritus 
of Abdera, originator of the atomic theory; Thales, who 



53 

laid the foundations of geometry upon which Euclid built; 
Plato and Aristotle, who have influenced the thought of 
western civilization and permeated the theology of both 
Christianity and Islam. All was the result of their own 
original thought unaided by accumulated knowledge, un- 
helped by any instruments or mechanical devices, — all 
the work of pure reflection and sheer mental strength. 
These men I have mentioned are only four in the great 
group of Greeks who, especially in the Periclean age, carried 
every form of pure thought as well as all the arts, painting, 
sculpture, poetry and the drama to a point that, it may fairly 
be said, has not been surpassed in all the triumphs of the 
centuries since the Renaissance. Thus history has shown 
that in the power and native strength of the human mind 
there has been no advance, although heaped-up knowledge, 
greatest of instruments, which has gone beyond all imagin- 
ings, is so often wrongly intermingled with our estimates 
of the unassisted human intellect. And yet all this did 
not touch the heart of the question or the faith in progress 
which inspired Webster. He believed that he found in 
the Pilgrims of Plymouth as he recounted their history a 
complete harmony with the spirit which he represented, 
and which was to govern and direct the century which lay 
before him. History has shown, indeed, that he expected 
too much; that the men of the nineteenth century thought 
they could at once effect changes which really might require 
ages for their fulfilment; that they neither completely 
understood the lessons of the past nor perceived the limita- 
tions which the laws of nature set to the possible accomplish- 
ment of their own brief lives. But the central point was 
not reached. If it became clear that proof of a law of prog- 
ress was lacking, it seemed to them equally obvious that 
there was no evidence of the negative — nothing to show 
that the progress of mankind in all directions might not 
continue. Whatever criticisms might be made, whatever 
limitations discovered, deep down at the very bottom was 
the fact that they were the exponents of a noble ideal which 
was in its essence nothing less than faith in the destiny of 
man. 



54 

So the century swept on and we are its children. It 
brought us to the point where the extended application of 
international arbitration, the conventions of Geneva and 
of the Hague, made strong the hope that there could be 
no more great wars, and seemed at least to assure us that 
if any war unhappily should come, then such limitations 
had been established and such agreements made that the 
worst horrors of war would be either avoided or mitigated. 
These hopes, these dreams, if you will, filled the minds 
of men. Then suddenly, without warning, there broke upon 
the Western World the greatest and the worst war ever 
known in a recorded history of six thousand years which 
had been filled with wars. Not only was it the greatest 
of wars, but when it came the powerful conventions of 
society, the comfortable fictions of daily existence, were 
rent and flung aside, and primitive man, even the savage 
of the Neanderthal period, began to show himself lurking 
behind the demure figure of nineteenth century respecta- 
bihty. The difference was that the primitive instincts and 
passions were now equipped with all the methods of de- 
struction which the latest and most advanced science could 
furnish. Germany had carried her purely materialistic 
conception of organization at home and dominion abroad 
to the highest point of perfection. How near she came to 
victory we know only too well. She fell upon a world which, 
except for the British Navy and the French Army, was 
unprepared. Reckless in her strength she finally did not 
hesitate to invade and trample on the rights of the United 
States until she forced us into the field. Her preparation 
was marvellously complete, her efficiency unrivaled — and 
she failed. All the nations arrayed against her were largely 
under the materialistic infiuences which were so powerful 
in that phase of nineteenth century progress, and which 
had forgotten the real and informing spirit of the time; 
confounded material progress with that of intellect and 
character, and made the cash basis loom large upon man's 
horizon. As Disraeli said, "The European talks of prog- 
ress because by the aid of a few scientific discoveries he 
has estabhshed a society which has mistaken comfort for 



55 

civilization." The mistake was not confined to Europe, 
and the confusion of thought which it imphes both as 
to science and civiHzation was world-wide. Fortunately, 
none of the other nations which fought against Germany 
were wholly under material control. When in presence of 
a dire peril their love of independence, of liberty, of free- 
dom of thought and of humanity between men and nations 
rose supreme. They preferred to suffer and die rather 
than lose these precious possessions, or sink into slavery 
and vassalage before a seeker of world dominion. So in- 
spired they won, and the German scheme of world con- 
quest went down in ruin. 

Now as a result we face an exhausted and almost pros- 
trate world, with suggestions in Asia of world conquest, 
while in another region a savage despotism which has re- 
placed the autocracy of the Czars is threatening the destruc- 
tion of all civilization. But that which most concerns us 
here are not the economic conditions, formidable and diflS- 
cult as those are, or even the physical dangers which so 
darken and overcloud the future. It is in the realm of ideas 
that the most significant manifestations are always to be 
found as well as the solution of the problems, if there be one, 
for in the end ideas reign and thought will govern the world. 

The inalienable companion of the spirit of progress — 
of the law of progress, if there is one, as the nineteenth 
century believed — is optimism, which is not a system of 
philosophy, but a state of mind. The hope for continuous 
moral and intellectual progress could not otherwise exist, 
but now, born of the great war and its legacies, the mental 
and emotional condition known as pessimism is rising up, 
looking us in the eyes and calling upon us to face the hard 
facts of history and of the world about us. Read the books 
and articles which are appearing daily in France and Ger- 
many and Italy and you will hear the note of pessimism 
ever waxing louder and more distinct. If it is said that it 
could hardly be otherwise among people who have just 
emerged from such an awful experience as theirs, one can 
only reply that this is their view, and their personal equa- 
tion does not alter the fact of their opinion being as it is. 



56 

Turn to Spain, a neutral country not ravaged by war. 
Recently I read an article by Senor Baldomero Argente 
from the "Heraldo" of Madrid. It begins in this way: 
"Faith in indefinite progress is merely another way of 
expressing our limited vision. We see that the world has 
been going forward during our lifetime, and assume that 
it will continue to do so. But I am convinced that our 
present civilization is about to perish the way earlier civiliza- 
tions have perished. Men may say that then we shall have 
a new civilization better and grander than the previous 
one. But are they sure that the present civilization is 
better than the civilization which preceded it?" He then 
goes on to trace the earlier civilizations which have risen, 
flourished and decayed; points to the wave of gross ma- 
terialism now flooding the world, the restlessness and ex- 
travagance of a civilization rotten to the core; and con- 
cludes, after admitting that a new civilization may arise 
and fall, "But the time will come when the people will no 
longer have the strength to revolt, and the nations of Europe 
will disappear one after another, never to revive until after 
a long night of barbarism." Here is not only a complete 
denial of the nineteenth century belief, but a profound 
skepticism as to whether there has been any real progress 
in the past, or that the civilization now tottering is the 
best. Go to England. There has recently been pubhshed 
a book by Mr. J. B. Bury, Regius professor of modern 
history at Cambridge, one of the ablest, most learned and 
most eminent of English historians, entitled the "Idea of 
Progress." At about the same time and with the same 
title appeared the Romanes lecture by Dean Inge, a brilliant 
writer and one of the most distinguished leaders among 
the clergy of the Church of England. Each in his own way 
comes to like conclusions. Professor Bury declares that 
the search for a law of progress has failed, and that the 
existence of such a law is wholly unproved; and Dr. Inge 
thinks that the laws of nature neither promise progress 
nor forbid it, but that assured belief in it is a nearly out- 
worn form of optimism. Here from these two eminent men 
is a flat negation of what the nineteenth century devoutly 



57 

believed. In our own country there is a stronger hope in 
the popular conception of progress, and better apparent 
grounds for it, perhaps, than in any other; but as the 
months have slipped by since the war no observant man can 
deny that there is a growing doubt, a rising tide of pessi- 
mism, among those who think and who are the first to see 
and to weigh the chances of the future. This situation, 
showing so strongly this tendency of thought in western 
civilization, is a very solemn one, not to be disregarded or 
lightly brushed aside. Webster turned to the great land- 
mark set up by the exiles from England on this spot in 
1620, and as he studied and depicted them and their deeds 
he saw nothing but stimulation and encouragement, and 
naught but harmony with the spirit of progress, — the 
spirit of his own time which he so largely embodied and 
illustrated in after years. 

This was the message of the Pilgrims to him and to his 
age as they read it. WTiat do they say to us, not in the 
dawn of a young hope everywhere for a new and better 
world, not in the heyday of the idea of continuous progress, 
but after six years of trial marked by an intensity and 
severity hitherto unknown, in an hour of darkness and 
doubt beset with perils which no man can measure or fore- 
see ? What meaning have the Pilgrims to us who have one 
and all been bred up in the nineteenth century spirit, who, 
carried away by the vast material progress of the past 
century, for the most part looking no further than the 
physical effects and thinking too little of the higher mean- 
ings, now find ourselves beset by doubts, surrounded by 
dangers, and with the theory of life which seemed so fixed 
and permanent trembling in the balance? What has the 
foundation of New Plymouth, so full of the inspiration of 
hope to Webster and his time, to say to us as we look about 
us in this troubled and desolated world .^^ 

As the little group of men and women who gathered 
here in 1620 stand out before us very luminous in the pages 
of history they have a stem, an austere, look, due perhaps 
in a measure to our own consciousness of what they believed 
and what they suffered and did. No doubt they lived and 



58 

toiled and loved and married and were given in marriage 
and met the little events, hurrying on from day to day, 
much as human nature in all ages has commanded. But 
it is to be feared that they did not face all these daily in- 
cidents of life with a smile. To them life was very serious, 
perhaps a safer conception than the other extreme, which 
finds money and amusement and restless movement the 
most desirable objects of existence. But whether light- 
hearted or grave, the Pilgrims encountered the demands 
of life with unfailing courage, a quality always essential, 
never more so than when the clouds hang low and the minds 
of men are filled with apprehension. They had a very 
strong and active sense of public duty. It is possible that 
by their example they can on this point teach us some- 
thing. Just at present there seems a great deal of concern 
about rights, and a tendency to forget the duties which 
rights must always bring with them, and without which 
rights become worthless and cannot be maintained. They 
were never so absorbed in their personal affairs as to forget 
those which concerned the public, — the public meaning 
to them the entire body of men and women who had come 
to the New World together. In this spirit, before they 
founded and established their little state, they drew up 
and signed the famous compact of the "Mayflower'* — 
a very memorable deed, this voluntary act. They combined 
themselves into *'a civil body politick," and agreed to 
make laws in accordance therewith, and to those laws and 
"offices" they promised "all due submission and obedience." 
It was a very simple little statement expressed in very 
few words. It is quite true that all that is vital in the com- 
pact may be found in Robinson's farewell letter received 
at Southampton, or in the patent itself. The Pilgrims 
may not have originated either the words or the principles 
of the compact, although the principles embodied were few 
and the words not many. But the fact remains that they 
had thought enough about government to agree upon these 
principles and be guided by them. It was only an agree- 
ment, if you please, but they made it. The act was theirs. 
They gave life to the thought. After all deductions made. 



59 

here was a Constitution of government whicli is in its essence 
an agreement among those who accept it, made by the people 
themselves, — an idea which has traveled far and wide, even 
to the ends of the earth and around the habitable globe since 
the "Mayflower" lay at anchor off Provincetown, Here, 
too, written in this same small paper was the proclamation 
of democracy, something which had quite faded away in 
Europe, and had never before been declared in the American 
hemisphere. The election of municipal officers was common 
enough in England, familiar no doubt to all the signers of the 
compact. What was of vital importance and entire novelty 
was that the signers of the compact arranged for their rulers 
and representatives in a new and unoccupied country. In 
an unknown land, with no surrounding pressure from an 
established society and an old civilization, when each man 
could easily have broken away and sought for license and op- 
portunity to do his own will, especially as they had founded 
their settlement outside the territorial limits of the patent, 
they promised to obey the laws made and accepted by the 
community. Each and every man of them sacrificed a part 
of his own liberty that all might be free. "Liberty," said 
Georges Clemenceau, a great man of our own time, "liberty 
is the power to discipline oneself," and this was the spirit 
which inspired the Englishmen who signed the "Mayflower" 
compact. No greater principle than this could have been 
established, for it is the comer stone of democracy and 
civilization. They knew that there could be no organized 
society unless laws made by the state were obeyed by all, 
and this mighty principle they planted definitely in the 
soil of their new country, where it has found its latest 
champion in a successor of Bradford and Winslow, the pres- 
ent Governor of Massachusetts. It was their palladium and 
it must be ours, also, for when it is reft from any state or 
nation the end of civilization in any form conceivable by 
us is at hand. The men of Plymouth thought and thought 
connectedly about government. In their new home they 
seem to have had, and very naturally, an impulse toward 
a larger action by society as a whole, and they tried com- 
munism in regard to land and its development. Their 



60 

native caution led them to limit the period of experiment, 
and when the time expired they abandoned it. You can 
find the story told in Bradford. Economically and socially 
they decided it to be a failure, an obstacle to advancement 
and in conflict with human nature, and they let it go with- 
out a pang. They decided that the right of man to private 
property honestly obtained was essential to social stability 
and to civilization. As in very adverse circumstances they 
managed to succeed, there is something here worthy of 
consideration in these days filled with the noise of destruc- 
tive, clamorous and ancient remedies for all human ills. 

Some twenty years later they joined the group of adja- 
cent colonies and formed the New England Confedera- 
tion, the first effort in the direction of that Union of States 
which was to make the United States and create a nation 
continent-wide in its scope. To have been the first to pro- 
claim democracy, and one of the first to engage in the open- 
ing attempt to unite scattered states in a nation, is an 
impressive record for the handful of men and women who 
landed from the "Mayflower" three hundred years ago. 
The underlying and the lasting causes which made the action 
of the Pilgrims a decisive event in history seem to me more 
than ever, as I enumerate them, to be not what they did 
with their ships and farms, their trade and their fisheries, 
but with their minds and with their thoughts. 

In these days of celebration, when public attention is 
strongly drawn to the Pilgrims, the voice of detraction is 
not stilled. There are always people, few happily in num- 
ber, but very vocal, who cannot bear to acknowledge great- 
ness, and to whom genius seems an offence. They seek in 
literature and in history to bring those whom men reverence 
and celebrate down to their own level. They search for the 
flaws, the errors, the shortcomings, and forget that those 
are not what concern us. No one regards the Pilgrims as 
perfect. They themselves had no such conception. They 
had a very deep and intimate conviction of sin. But what 
matters is their greatness not their littleness. They did a 
great deed; there it stands, ineffaceable and beyond for- 
getfulness. They fought a good fight; they made mistakes 



61 

and some other things besides. They had strong characters 
and unyielding courage. They had deep convictions. They 
were close kin to Macaulay's Puritan. "He prostrated him- 
self in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot upon 
the neck of his king." Whatever their failings, however 
simple, uneducated and undistinguished the mass of them 
may have been, they did a mighty work, and their work 
lives after them. The conquerors of untrodden continents, 
the founders of great nations, are not so common as unduly 
to crowd the highways of history, and when we meet with 
them it is wiser, more wholesome, to venerate them for 
what they did than to belittle them because they were not 
perfect in all the details of life demanded by their critics in 
the much-abused name of the truth of history which the 
Pilgrims would have been the last to fear. 

Yet the greatest of all still remains behind. The founders 
of New Plymouth came here to find freedom to worship God 
in their own way. They sought to preserve their race, their 
allegiance to their native country and their language, but 
their religious freedom was the primary object to which all 
material purposes, all hope of bettering their worldly con- 
dition, were entirely subordinate. In 1597 some of their 
forerunners petitioned to be allowed to settle in Canada, 
and wished to go because there "we may not onlie worship 
God as we are in conscience persuaded by his word but also 
doe unto her majestic and our country great good service." 
So comes the voice of a quarter of a century before. Listen 
now to what Bradford says on the eve of the final landing, 
and you feel in every line the great aspiration of their 
souls: — 

May and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say: Our 
faithers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean, and were ready 
to perish in this wiUdemess, hut they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their 
voyce, and looked on their adversitie, etc. Let them therefor praise the Lord 
because he is good and his mercies endure forever. 

Whatever our beliefs or disbeliefs, here is a very noble 
and beautiful spirit, a very fine and lofty courage, to be 
reverentially admired of all men, and which can never 



62 

be out of fashion. It matters not whether we agree with 
their theology or with their forms of Christian worship. 
That which counted then and has counted ever since was 
that they set the spiritual above the material, the posses- 
sions of the mind and heart above those which ministered 
to the body and made life easier and more comfortable. 
They builded herein better than they knew. The object 
immediately before them was freedom to worship God in 
their own way which had been denied to them in their native 
country. That of which they were not conscious was the 
corollary of their great aspiration, when once fulfilled, that 
all other men must also be free to worship God in their 
own several ways. Their powerful neighbors of Massa- 
chusetts Bay, coming with a like purpose, resisted for half 
a century the inevitable result with all the fierce energy 
of earnest men strong both in character and intellect, and 
failed. When the Pilgrims achieved their purpose through 
much sacrifice and suffering they opened the door to the 
coming of freedom of conscience, and freedom of conscience 
meant freedom of thought upon everything within the mental 
range of humanity. Of all the possessions painfully won 
by the race of men throughout the centuries nothing ap- 
proaches either in value or meaning the right of each and 
every man and woman to think their own thoughts in their 
own way. Can we longer wonder that the coming of the 
Pilgrims to these shores towers ever higher as a decisive 
event in history, for the battles won in the fields of thought 
make all other battles look small indeed, as the procession 
of the centuries moves slowly by. 

Webster saw the greatness of the Plymouth achievement; 
he saw the progress in things material and in knowledge 
of the historic world, and, above all, he saw the progress 
which had come in his own land from the labors, the deeds 
and the principles of the Pilgrims who set forth from Leyden. 
Apparently, as I have already pointed out, he did not see, 
or if he saw he did not draw, the distinction between historic 
progress in arts, science and knowledge and a law of progress 
which was to be the fine flower and the overruling influence 
in the century which he represented and wherein he was 



63 

to play so distinguished a part. To the Pilgrims the very 
idea of a law of progress was unknown. Even their great 
contemporary, Francis Bacon, who prepared the way for 
it, never accepted or formulated it. But they faced the 
world as they found it and did their best. The sustaining 
power of the nineteenth century which was faith in the 
continuous progress of mankind on the earth was not theirs. 
But whether there is a law of progress or not these Pilgrims 
of Plymouth stand forth exemplars of certain great principles 
which never can grow old and which can never be of better 
service than in days of doubt and trouble such as now beset 
the world. On one great point they made their meaning 
clear. They never confused moral and economic values; 
they never set material advance above the higher qualities 
of heart and mind. They never for a moment thought 
that life and its mysteries could be expressed in economic 
terms, which seems, if not actually avowed, to be the 
tendency among all classes to-day. They set character first. 
They reverenced learning and did homage to intellectual 
achievement. They succeeded marvellously. As we look 
at the world to-day, at what it seeks and what it apparently 
longs to be, is there not a great lesson to be learned and 
followed by us as it shines forth in the aspirations and deeds 
of these plain people whom here we celebrate? The wild 
new land, the unconquered wilderness which gave them the 
freedom they sought, seized with surprising quickness upon 
the deepest affections of their heart. It seems as if they 
said that here and not elsewhere will we live and strive — 

Until at last this love of earth reveals 
A soul beside our own, to quicken, quell. 
Irradiate, and through ruinous floods uplift. 

A noble aspiration always, and when the "ruinous floods" 
came, as they did, these Pilgrims still pressed on, won 
through, and lifted up the cause for which they came, in 
the land they had made their own. 

In all probability they still held to the belief of the Ancient 
World and of the Middle Ages that our minute planet was 
the center of the universe, to which, if I am not mistaken. 



64 

Francis Bacon, regardless of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, 
still adhered. The earth was all they had, and brief life 
was here their portion as it is with us. Yet they did not 
live in vain. They strove to do their best on earth and to 
make it, so far as they could in their short existence, a 
better place for their fellow men. They were not slothful 
in business, working hard and toiling in their fields and 
on the stormy northern seas. They sought to give men 
freedom both in body and mind. They tried to reduce the 
sum of human misery, the suffering inseparable from human 
existence. Whatever our faith, whatever our belief in 
progress, there can be no nobler purposes for man than thus 
to deal with the only earth he knows and the fragment of 
time awarded him for his existence here. As we think of 
them in this the only true way, our reverence and our ad- 
miration alike grow ever stronger. We turn to them in 
gratitude, and we commend what they did and their ex- 
ample to those who come after us. While the great republic 
is true in heart and deed to the memory of the Pilgrims of 
Plymouth it will take no detriment even from the hand of 
Time. 



BENEDICTION 

Reverend THEODORE E. BUSHELD, D.D. 



BENEDICTION 



May grace, mercy and peace from our great God and 
Father be with us and with our country, as in all the days of 
the past, so in all the days and years to come. Amen. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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